NO BS FRIDAY: Don’t believe anyone, especially these guys…

My understanding of how the media works was out-dated… and dangerously optimistic.

Confession time: I’ve been dangerously behind the times.

Things had moved faster than I thought, and I need to catch up.

I used to congratulate myself for having the media pegged. I had a nice little narrative that helped me rise above the depression and anxiety that too much news can give you.

That story went like this:

Humans are emotional creatures, and we are particularly primed to fear and disaster.

The primary objective of news outlets is to sell units and make money.

Putting one and two together, media outlets will go out of their way to frame things in a negative light, and put greater emphasis on disaster and woe. “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Therefore, you can’t trust the media for an accurate take on reality. It’s heavily biased towards bad news. Watch too much of it, then you too, will feel bad.

I thought I was so smart.

But the world has changed, and we need to catch up.

There a few huge changes that have take place in recent years.

The first is that the traditional media are no-longer the gate-keepers they once were. We now have thousands and thousands of different options, all available at the click of a button.

However, this diversity is funnelled through a very narrow gateway. Mostly we’re talking Facebook and Twitter.

A recent study found that 44% of Americans use Facebook as their primary news source.

So this massive diversity finds itself crammed into an extremely competitive single marketplace.

At the same time, our news-consumption has gone online. We don’t buy the whole paper and read whatever’s there anymore. We follow our interests. If we don’t like the angle, if we don’t like the writer, if we don’t like the topic, or if we simply get bored, we move on.

People have also started using the news they consume as a way to express their identity. Such and such a twit said something that offends my tribal identity. Let me share something that covers the event well – according to my personal filter of the facts – so that you will all know how much I care about the issue.

I await your likes.

And we know that a lot of people will share a story, even if they’ve never read it, let alone paused to think about whether it was true. The headline gives me the emotional response I’m looking for. Share.

Traditional media outlets also used to be constrained by the facts. They might have presented biased angles or op-ed pieces, but most things still had to be grounded in fact. They cared about their reputations.

Many modern news-creators aren’t so phased about ‘facts’. The aim isn’t to educate and enlighten. The aim is to titillate and enrage. You’ve probably noticed at least a few articles where you thought, ‘this is obviously B.S.’

However a few bad apples ruins the batch. Since the fake-news outlets are competing with real news outlets in the same marketplace, we create a race to the bottom. Even establishment outlets are now turning to click-bait. They have to, otherwise they’ll be left behind.

Algorithms then amplify the problem. Facebook watches what you like and interact with very carefully, and then gives you more of the same. And then more and more of it.

Ultimately, your “newsfeed” becomes an echo-chamber for the facts you already believe and the opinions you already agree with.

Since everything you’re exposed to confirms what you know, the more outrageous examples – things that would seem outrageous to a genuinely partial observer – don’t seem so outrageous – so long as they’re broadly in line with your world view.

As a result, it becomes much harder to tell fake-news from real-news.

And since we also exist in competitive social spaces, we’re also more inclined to share things that are shocking and outrageous.

In this space, outrageous bullshit flies and flies. Like rumours of Bill Clinton’s illegitimate black son. Or Trump’s interview with Playboy Magazine in 1988 where he said he’d run as a Republican because Republicans are stupid.

Even stuff that doesn’t seem to serve any agenda – like Kurt Cobain supposedly predicting a Trump victory back in 1993.

During the third Presidential debate, Trump A/B tested social media messages with 175,000 variations!

I use A/B testing myself. Say I’m running an ad. I create two versions. On one ad I put a picture of a smiling woman. On the other, a smiling man. Then I send it out to a sample and see which one does better.

I then pick that one as my main ad and send it out more broadly.

So that’s A/B testing with two variations. What does A/B testing with 175,000 variations look like? The mind boggles. There would have been multiple versions for white voters. Multiple versions for black voters. Multiple versions for men, and then again for women. Red state vs Blue state, old vs young etc.

Facebook gives you opportunities for endless targeting, which means more ways for the message to slip into people’s echo chambers.

So our media has become targeted, biased, emotive and full of bullshit stories that just aren’t true.
And all this has happened in the past 5 years.

For a while there I was celebrating the death of traditional media. I was looking forward to the end of the fear-trade and the democratisation of information.

But I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. Rather, we have created echo chambers for ourselves, and those echo chambers are rapidly filling up with emotive bull-shit.

Comments

hmmm..my echo chamber tells things too jonno. it tells me that trump won the election and that hillary clinton is an outright lying bitch of a slut. there you are, hows that for an echo?

now for serious business:

how much does the ‘average’ oz person know about the third reich in antarctica? yes that bit of land south of here with all sorts of diabolicals going on. you don’t know?

how much money will you have in your hand soon? or gold or silver.(hint, don’t leave it in the ‘ bank’)?

what does anyone know about the ‘hollow earth’?.(hint its to do with entry and exit of spacecraft at the poles. the americans discovered or rather traced these two entry/exit points through a triple setup in alaska, and two other locations recently). science fiction? maybe, we only believe what we want to believe.

have you heard of admiral byrd or his revelations about antarctica?

do you know anything about ‘boltholes’ in new zealand? (that’s where the elites are bolting for soon to get out of america) maybe we should by some property in nz and get a good investment.

what do you know about the ‘arc of gabriel’ and where is it now?

where is this all heading? i don’t know and i certainly won’t read about or see it in the media. but we will find out soon enough., i think. in a physical sense.

finally jonno. i never look at facebook(my daughter in law put me on there a few years ago despite my objections)except if some deranged gorgeous female sends me a message. or twitter(for twits?). being a social media outlet ..well thats enough for me lol so i am spared the echo bullshit.

it is strange world inhabited by strange barbarians. and super barbarians in canberra. why do we always depict aliens as evil rapacious creatures? because the movie industry tells us so. and we swallow it hook line and sinker. so aliens are a real, nasty problem. and you know what..its all russia’s fault. so there!! they rigged the american election, they invaded ukraine. they bombed aleppo. they did all sorts of diabolical things. and poor hillary tried to save us all. ‘god’ bless the poor demented bitch who threw a mother of tantrums after the election she a gonna win easy baby.

thats my rant for today. i had to get that off my chest you know:-) and trust in good government.

oh sorry. i forgot to mention flouride. if you have dementia already don’t bother reading about it..its too late. its in all of our metro water supplies. look up the website of your local water supplier. i did. yesterday and i got the biggest shock of all time. it led me to other websites. oh boy! the revelations..all substantited and verified. you have all heard of aids? no? yes? it is a manufactured, created disease, designed for world population control. 93,000,000 africans were given jabs supposedly for some ailment or other…but ..oh bugger! we gave them jabs of hiv-1. how careless. a very interesting article which goes for over 20 pages or more. and moreover it discusses the use of hydrogen flourides in the preparation of nuclear weapons (1944-45). so we drink it. who knows what might happen. we go nuclear? help! my sixth sense tells me that we better do something real quick. or we may forget who we are soon. and thats a lovely tale of rising dementia sufferers. a virtual explosion.

You can only form your opinions from the information you receive. This begins as a child where the indoctrination starts with your parents, then continues through your formal education. After that it is the various news outlets be they printed media, TV or now the internet. The bottom line is crap information produces crap opinions which is why it is so important that we teach our children the value of independent thought and to question the status quo. It might make your life more difficult as a parent but the pay off is free thinking adults as opposed to internet educated zombies.

Jon Giaan -spot on as always. What a lot of people don’t read about is the fact politicians are the same as journalists – they talk bullshit and the press publishes it as fact without checking. Also journalism has gone to the pack due to the centralising of media companies to a very select few and those are the ones that control political outcomes – until the Trump result! The “public” showed they weren’t entirely accepting what they read about Trump’s past – 10-15 years ago – and they were sick of the established cronyism and corruption that has become American politics. The only reason Hilary got more votes overall was in the states she won were full of bankers; financial advisors; lobbyists; public servants; and ‘advisors’ and she outspent Trump in the campaign in media (radio, TV ; and newspapers) ads by a huge margin and all the ‘free’ editorial published by Murdoch and the three other media baron owners.
Where’s it heading? Toward the 2-3 minute news bite on TV or lifting from social media using “trap’ questions that leave answers pointing to the required view of the paper or media site – (more likely) with no prior checking as to if it’s fact or fiction.

As for the obvious, rapid deterioration of the media into drivel, nonsense, regurgitated Press Releases and whatever, quick and dirty sensational news they can spew…

I’m not so worried about that. It’s like e-mail. Seems almost everyone who recently got on-line thought e-mail was the “new way”. Despite the fact that it is hopelessly time consuming and inefficient, they just had to use e-mail, for everything. For them, it was the latest novelty, latest craze. Slowly, most people woke up.

Then, it was facebook, twitter, etc, etc. Some people are “over” those now too. Not enough, but it will happen. I mean, who really cares, about most of the drivel. Fortunately, the cycle time is speeding up. Every new novelty wears off, sooner or later. Click bait will soon be “yesterday” as well.

The big problem I see is filtering out the BS from the plausible, from reality. I guess, as some point, the serious players will wake up too and refine their offerings for those prepared to pay. I mean, with free news, you get the quality you pay for. Those who don’t want to pay – who cares, let them surf their lives away. Just make sure they read our ads, buy our junk.

For me, the biggest problem we have (in NZ anyway, and probably the same in Oz), is the dumbing down of the education system. Kids now are being taught nothing. They know so little about the world. They are becoming like sheep, easily led, easily herded…

ah ha! kiwi al. yes its becoming chrystal clear that all is not well in denmark. but then there are gonna be 1.6million saudis let loose soon with US$3 tn to spend on gold.

now while our politicians and bull dust adherents have been trashing our economy.we have all but forgotten about mining for gold. its just too damned expensive at a retrieval rate of some AU$1649 bucks an ounce(?). now oz holds 79.85 tons of gold as its reserves(40th in world rankings) which is ‘worth’ AU$ 4,719,147,776 or US$.3,434,188,800.
at the moment we have AU$ 30,000,000,000 of notes and coin in currency (fiat money), meaning that there is one ounce of gold at AU$1,649 for every bit of fiat currency. a ratio of app. 6.5. fiat to gold. also there is not AU$30bn circulating in the oz economy, but AU$15bn. the other AU$15bn is in tins in the backyard and under mattresses. that is the legacy of 2008!

there is NOT 8,133 tons of gold in fort knox..it is in chinese custody(ownership) at the rate of many tons per annum from U.S. vaults. in fort knox there is 8,133 tons of gold plated tungston bars, made in china of course lol. many attempts have been made to audit this ‘gold’ (supposedy worth worth over 47bn US $ but the united states treasury says the audit is too expensive at US$3 million. you can have your own thoughts on that one. the US treasury seems now to be a front for a ‘laundering’ business.

back to oz, and i have written before about this. in 1997 the honourable treasury, buffoon peter costello (then we had abbott) arranged with the oz treasury to transfer(sell) to an american company
160 tons of oz gold at AU$303 per ounce (a shot in the foot?) in exchange for FIRST CLASS securities. when questioned about these first class securities the oz treasury officials declared that gold was an anachronism so to speak, not worth the time of day they said. glad to get rid of it at the aforesaid AU$303 an ounce. (AU$ 1,737,523,200). that gold would be worth over AU$9,000,000,000.00. the first class securities? oh well..ha ha. well its sort of like it didn’t pan out too well really , sayeth sources close to the treasury. well how much are they worth? hmm well its a little embarrassing..er not much. in fact..bugger all! has oz been conned? the original report of the sale came out on page 9 of ‘the west australian’ in mid 1997, so it must be true, i think.

back to the saudis and further forward to the shanghai gold exchange which has just been initiated.
this exchange deals in ‘REAL GOLD’ not those bulldust letters of exchange that the super banks pass in their thousands overnight out of sight so to suppress the price of gold.(290:1 ratio..that is fake gold ounces to one real gold ounce) if you don’t have physical gold at the shanghai gold exchange, don’t show up: its one for one there. libor etc. are pissing themselves because their shenanigans and coffee stall tricks are coming to an end and guess where the saudis are headed?. they are gonna buy up every ounce of gold they can get their hands on. US$3tn worth? explosion??
(in price i mean). every bit likely. and more so now that the chinese have been buying, hoarding and secreting gold for many years, while our oz government has been playing balance of trade with the brits and the americans and the euro zone..treachery?

now lets look at silver. same deal different colour. now not many people realise that there is not that much silver around. the last estimate was about 4,700 cubic metres and it disappears in commercial use. gold is about 19,400 cubic metres. gold to silver ratio has forever been 16:1 in value. today.as it has been for a little while is 45:1 ratio so it has some catching up to do. if it ever reaches 16;1 again i will be very happy cos my holdings are mostly silver coins, very negotiable and minted by perth.
if gold goes to US$10,000 an ounce(!!) means silver is a gonna explode to US$633.00 an ounce from its US$30 now. there is a better way to exploit the values of gold and silver by at least 20:1 than holding coin or bullion, but i have’nt the intelligence to do anything about that.

now about that railway line and super highway from siberia to U.S.A. and downwards to argentina over the bering straight, which trumpie and vladimer p. have had agreements on very recently. you see the biggest danger confronting him via assassination is this bering straight crossing. pres. bill mckinlay (1900) and tsar nicholas 2 (1917) were both assassinated for trying to cross that straight with a railway line. the brits were dead against it and built the panama canal with help from U.S.A. the americans were very friendly with the brits in thos days and the brits ‘;ruled the waves’ then, so that no pesky railway line was gonna bugger things up. thats how the world is run folks. hillary wanted the status quo to continue (via george soros..hungarian jew who wants to destroy U.S.A.) along comes strawman trump. are you getting the picture? jonn, try to refer your readers back to this article, they migth learn something. thank you al for your contribution.

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